idonotexist Reviews

Frozen (I) (2010)

A ski lift to nowhere

[6/10 · 11 May 2024]

I really was expecting this to be way cheesier than it was; i had very low expectations, especially given than the movie started like every other single generic group of friends movie. I was about to quit right there but i had nothing better lined up to watch so i kept it running; glad i did.

As the runtime went on it managed to create a sense of curiosity about the predicament the characters are in. I really did want to keep watching which is rare for such a movie.. this one remains somewhat engaging mostly due to lack of hysterics from the cast. They are accepting of their situation and try to resolve it giving this a bit of an adventure feel rather than straight up panic on the ski lift movie.

What i did not like about it is that this is another movie that goes completely out the field when it comes to animal behavior. They could have used other ways to do what they did and especially at the end they doubled down on the absurdity. I knocked FALL (2022) down for the same reason as i have to apply to FROZEN here... animal absurdity as used in the movie for the purposes of moving the script. It feels like an easy cheap way to do something just because you had to. In truth there is no real thought put behind it. And it's a shame because they would have done a better job without that entire aspect here and just focused on something else; they had plenty of options.

6\10 this is why you never try to cheat on tickets.

Fallout (2024– )

HALO lite

[7/10 · 28 April 2024]

First things out of the way, the first episode was a hot mess but the show quickly recovered and pushed out a decent season. I did not like the opener at all, as major part of the fallout games experience was the whole life inside the vault. Here all that is done horribly, rushed out and we are kicked down the road as quickly as they can film it. There's also too many incomplete flashbacks, random events and all over the place jumping in that one episode. As far as pilots go, this is one of the worst i've seen in a while. However, as i said, they quickly move on from that and the rest of the episodes are fine.

Why do i call it halo lite.. well, because throughout the whole season it reminded me of halo in so many ways. Contrary to the games they went for military adaptation over survival, shoving the armor of the brotherhood to the center. The lone protagonist (player) in the wasteland that the games are focused on is not a thing here. The series world is all about faction vs faction instead of vault dweller vs the unknown. Support characters are irrelevant and meaningless beyond their singular use followed by death or removal from screen time.

The series goes straight into chasing some item making it the focal purpose of the season, just like in halo you are chasing the artifacts. All the elements that halo show revolved around, so does fallout. Corruption, conspiracies, secret motives, etc etc. At the same time, we know the games are not the same at all. Yet the shows are basically very close to each other.

Where they differ is in that FALLOUT tries to be light; they go for the comedic here and there and not all doom and gloom serious business every scene. I am not sure i am a fan of this. Fallout is not a parody and beyond the comedic contrast of the vault with the outside, the world is not like we see here. They removed the doom and gloom and we have some censored washed up zombie series where characters are overly quirky and downright stupid. Some scenes feel straight out of IDIOCRACY to the point i had to look up the cast to see if they are the same people... Fallout obviously samples other shows and we cannot get around that. It's beyond obvious at times. MAD MAX still has the best wasteland characters with the most logical behavior for the setting. Even WATERWORLD uses more sense in building screen extras. Just for extra convincing, LOST makes a cameo with Ben Linus reprising his lost character in fallout. I mean this down to his manners, speech, looks; everything. Nice easter egg honestly but also come on guys, be original! Still, seeing Linus again after all this years felt good. I wonder if the island survived the nuclear fallout.... since the timeframe of dharma corp on the island does fit the period of fallout flashback scenes.. Homage is sometimes underappreciated but not always relevant.

Simply stated the show is not realistic. We see a bunch of specifically shown injuries and i can tell you from personal experience, you are not trekking across the desert with those injuries. The pain alone would be unbearable. The pain of utilizing those damaged body parts, would be unfathomable. Let's just ignore attempts that this is serious in any way and focus around what they went for.

Their goal was to make something fun based on a stylized version of the game. It feels like it with all the forced naivety and sanitized wasteland. The only reason the show didn't burn was because it is fun. It is not dull and you want to keep watching just to see. It is not perfect and its overall rating on here is just absolutely inflated, but for all the runtime they do a decent job keeping it together. There are plot holes, there are odd choices made and one must never forget this is not serious science fiction. If one does not dissect it apart it works. Yet if you begin to nitpick it has lots of things wrong with it. Fortunately what it has is good enough and entertaining enough.

7\10 master chief of the spartans, meet knight maximus of the brotherhood.

The Spiderwick Chronicles (2024)

copypaste fairy tale teen drama

[3/10 · 24 April 2024]

Ever since stranger things became a thing everybody is jumping on that wagon; this one is just another forgettable and regrettable show about nothing and everything at the same time.

The good.. The cast is not annoying. That is always a plus in something is thrown together to fill air time.

The decor is also decent enough. Mansion is well done, effects work well, animations are proper. Nothing wrong with the aesthetics but again, there should be nothing wrong with those at our current level of technology.

Everything else on the other hand leaves nothing to praise. Everything has been done before, there is not a single original thought or concept anywhere in the script, not a single thing will surprise you, every character is make up deep and see through.

It is so pointless to watch this i don't even want to describe why. Bottom line is this however; it is not fun. It really is just not fun. Everything else aside, it is not fun and there is no reason to watch this.

3\10 boring with disjointed yet predictable script.

The Stranger (2021)

Missing half the movie

[4/10 · 23 April 2024]

This is a very slow and drawn out movie. The first half is really good; you get this slow burn and build up, you get into the mood of the scenery and the characters. Very well done and was expecting things to continue going well.

Unfortunately the movie ends half way in, just as we are about to start getting into the bulk of the plot synopsis. Around this point things go horribly wrong and the movie takes a straight edged turn into nothing. It derails itself and it reminds me of a very pointless 6 hour long turkish drama, without the 6 hour run time that is, or even the drama. They just abandon the first half, and start piecing together random scenes with bizarre and scant dialogue that make no real sense up until credits.

It plays like a monologue of things they wanted to make a movie about but never did; instead we get this really weird sequence of pointless scenes that serve no purpose but to allow run time so some random words can be spoken. I am not going to get into details (spoilers) about what is said but it went from a good movie to somebody's diary being read in prose. It is not even a reflective movie, although this is what they wanted to show but butchered it so bad it cannot be considered such. The delivery is just horrible and has 0 effect on the viewer; it is also extremely boring and disjointed further ensuring whatever points they wanted to say, were properly ignored by any audience!

The ending.... What is that even supposed to signify. We are missing a scene (or 500), clearly, because it jumps around to be incomprehensible on purpose. Then fades into narration of things that are contradictory to what was said 20 minutes ago. I understand he went rogue against the wishes of the village elders, but it is never actually said why, what exactly occurred and where it is happening..

How is one supposed to interpret that... the final location was perhaps the last chance they had at some cohesion here and they threw that out into imaginationland. Tt does not match places from earlier in the movie so as you go through theories about the ending, you have to discard them because they do not work.

Unless of course it is just an omission and what we are shown is just filler content and we have to go by the narration, which leaves one of two possible outcomes. Both of which are absolutely stupid and irrational.

Very unfortunate it went like this... it had a lot going for it but they spliced another script half way in and just forgot what they were doing.

4\10 it will make you think, but only as far as you trying to fill in the blanks of the script.

Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023)

unimaginative, cheap and generic, but watchable

[5/10 · 17 April 2024]

Well the review is in the title, but since i have to write something here, let's go a little deeper. This is just the start of another franchise of weird superhero like movies with a overly accentuated characters. We have warriors princesses, warrior princes, warrior commanders, and the list goes on. The movie started nice, but then just devolved. Would have liked it if it just built on that first 10 minutes; instead it went all out into kitchen sink writing.

CGI is bad. Very cheap and you can spot all the cheese. Oh well.

The universe is basically nazis in space, which has been done a few times before. Find something less cliched .. i mean its imaginary scifi, like be creative!

Acting is eh. As a superhero like movie there is no real acting. Just some amazing fighting abilities and stupid situations to showcase them. And of course every cast member has their own thing. But they all have the ability to never be shot as they run around with shorts to close the gap against 40 machine guns firing at you.. anyway, more cheese than a cheese factory.

5/10 because it was not horrible. Watch and forget.

Wayward Pines (2015–2016)

Ran itself out way fast

[7/10 · 12 April 2024]

Great show with wonderful ideas that just ran itself out of places to go very fast sealing its short run and linear ending. This is a show that has a secret. It plays on the notion of small town secrets but takes it way out there by expanding on that concept to make it a world with a secret.

They drop hints about random odd things throughout the episodes and that does keep tension up on the long term plot, while the near events are focused around some paramilitary dystopian oppression.

The show reveals just about everything at the end.. wake up neo, you are in a simulation but that simulation is all you have left. Once you realize what is going on, it becomes absolutely stupid primarily for one reason.

I do not understand why nor can i find a logical reason, the workings behind the "persistent secret keepers". The show tries in a terrible way to show children are the way forward by making them the bridge between the old and the new and they are all in on it. And every single one of them kids, from whatever ages they have on the show, is fine with it. Great secret keepers because that is exactly how children behave. Little nancy here is only 7 but she has 68 years experience as a CIA operative and can handle the truth just fine swindling all the adults around her, while being just a normal kid never breaking character. Ugh it hurts. The stupid just hurts.

The kids know what is going on and they are hiding it from the adults. So you would think the kids run the show then like a shadowy clan.. no. Maybe the kids are some secret genetic project to give them the psyche of the best psyop agents ever.. no. They are just kids, who know, and who just go along with it in that whole mess of a world.

See the adults, still run the town, even tho they are clueless, but the adults are still in charge while the kids hide the truth from the adults and just go along with it. They are also waiting for the adults to die using them as caretakers until the kids take over to create that new world (reseeding if you will). Try to wrap your head around that. Not just certain kids, ALL the kids. They are all in on it. And they never mess up playing their roles in the community. You cannot recover from that much stupid and the show burns itself out and just goes into destruction mode for cheap trills.

Since the show becomes a meme and not serious anymore, we get some action taking down the evil regime before he can reset it again, which as a concept i found to be great. Of course, that is the absolute worse outcome here, to destroy the simulation or cancel the reset, but remember clueless adults are in charge and thats what they want to do. And the all knowing kids are just like ok!

How the show works, and it tells us that has occurred a few times before is if the town doesn't go the right way, the main creator just resets it. Just kill all (except few key carry over figures) the adults, wake up new ones and start over till you get the society you want. Problem is, those kids. See apparently there is an issue with making babies so you cannot purge the kids.. And they remain and linger and it's flabergasting levels of stupid to feed that to the viewer and pretend it can somehow ever work. It wouldn't be an issue if the show didn't take itself seriously and claim it's all part of some larger plan. Once you realize it is just a manure field they are dragging the script through, we are done. Shut it down roll credits and file it under cancelled.

Ultimately people lose and the mutations produce cute monster babies solving the breeding issue (we find out human monster hybrids are possible). Life goes on, just not like we knew it. Or the savior of the people envisioned since we ruined his attempt anyway. We are left with the knowledge that hybrid creatures will be the new thing, but not with enough information to really know how that new population will go from there. It hints it will be fine, fine as in monsters being the new humans, but we are not given enough information of these creatures leaving that empty feeling at the end. Is it possible to eventually breed out the monsters after generations, are the hybrids the it thing, how will that whole world work.. Show us the contrast between the vision of the world between that of the creator and the natural reality since that was such a huge thing throughout. The big ideological shift if you will is just left hanging. He wanted the perfect human world from the ruins, instead we get monster babies he built this whole thing to protect the survivors from. End on an open irony.

A show that should have been stretched out for another season but self imploded by taking the stupid train on 2-3 critical elements. The failure of this show can be placed solely with one person. Because in a Shyamalan production, he always has to have kids be the key to something but never has the ability to make them relevant. He always pits the new (kids) vs the old morals (adults) but never makes it work. At some point all his scripts just hit that wall and eject. This show is no different. Perhaps he should stop using a plot element he cannot utilize properly. He cannot close it, he always opens it, draws you in and then doesn't know what to do with it. Goes way too deep to grab you in and cannot dig out it. His movies, his shows... all victim to that same pattern. Because you see, he is a very shallow writer and a weak director. He never has the strength to make unpopular decisions in his works. He uses kids to draw viewer sympathy, makes them into adults (and often unpleasant ones) then spins the script around to make the actual adults go full stupid to protect the kids while the kids are suddenly turned into helpless kids minimized and written out. If you are going to assign kids adult functions, you have to give them adult treatment. That's right, you have to go full lord of the flies. But he never does because he does shallow writing using kids for viewer appeal and sympathies. And that's why nothing he ever makes works, and it never will because it is just copy paste writing with a different theme. His core script development is always the same.

7\10 sorry mom you are being purged tomorrow so your replacement can be unfrozen by lunch.

Helix (2014–2015)

When i grow up i want to be as weird as helix

[6/10 · 12 April 2024]

This is such a weird series. The intro music is so random it makes no sense. But every episode it grinds you down as the HELIX logo is faded in. It really feels like they are mocking us with this tune. And it means nothing either, no plot relevance at all. Just wanted to point that out. All of that.

This is a thematic show where each season has a theme with mostly the same cast and characters, but each season is its own distinct environment.

Season 1 takes us into some weird hunger games land in the middle of the frozen wasteland and a lot of things happen. Some utterly far fetched, some (few) ...... ((ok minuscule number)) plausible. Each episode takes 1 day in the show, roughly, and that remains true for both seasons. And when you think about that, there are 2 very apparent issues with this series.

1. entirely too much takes place in the timeframe they give us 2. None of it is real. It might as well be a cartoon. None of it can be real in that time span. But they say it is, therefore, we must redefine our expectations.

Going by the timeframe alone the show is not realistic or even plausible. It is entertaining, but it is not realistic. Some uberwund CDC team that solves fascinating genetic, infectious and other puzzles in the span of a week, while dealing with their own drama and what not (what not being 4000 sub plots and events). Makes you wonder if they can do all that in a week, why can't they fix cancer in 2 weeks prior to the show.. I am doing it.. i am trying to use logic here. That's bad, no logic. Just go with it at face value. No deeper meaning, do not seek one in HELIX.

Ignoring reality, this is not a bad show. This is in fact pretty good. Cast is good, some are not but they are not recurring characters so we can ignore them, acting is decent... characters are not annoying either. Nothing bad here, rather likable. And yes my favourite character did die in a very stupid way and im still annoyed by it. That character was amazing. Take my word for it, even if i wont tell you who it was because no spoilers on this one.

Plot holes are as deep as the mariana trench. We just have to deal with those too. A lot of things are not explained or they are totally simplified to the point of being insulting and there is no lore, no real backstory and no real time to do any of that come to think of it. The series is very compressed and just feels like they wrote it in and then somebody said you get that many episodes, make it fit, so they started chopping off scenes by the pound and putting things in for the sake of entertainment. It is not a bad focus because it is not boring. For as incomplete it is, it is not boring.

Season 2.. well that fixes absolutely nothing from season 1. Well actually it does fix the frostbite because now we have gone full far cry in the tropics. Cool location, will totally set up a vineyard at their filming spot. Season 2 bumps up the confusion to a dangerous level and leaves you with even less backstory and even deeper plot holes. The entire black void between season 1 and season 2 which is a literal 1 year (both in air time and literal show time... i see what they did here) is extremely annoying. It feels so raw, it feels like you literally missed an entire season and as you are trying to make sense of the stupid snippet scenes they show you of that void, it just makes it even more confusing. We have taken plot holes to new depths. At this point we are scratching the earths core.. any deeper we will go through and hit mars. That's how bad it gets.. Yet, it is not boring still. It is an amazing phenomenon of a script. For so many issues with timelines, events, backstories, plots and all other things we consider important, this somehow manages to keep itself from falling apart. You cannot hate it... and you still enjoy watching it; I cannot explain it. Perhaps because in season 2 the acting gets better and you just watch the characters do whatever and you don't care what. They act well doing anything and you are ok with that. Take the trash out, cool. Carry some fruit.. cool. Mundane activities are given some meaning throughout.

I started this complaining about the intro music of each episode; i even called it a joke. Well, im now completely convinced they are trolling the viewers with it. Why am i saying this.. well, watch along and when you reach the andy griffith show, it will all make sense. And i love it. It is so random so nonsensical, so bizarre it will make you remember it.

I could sit here and spoil it and point things out in detail but it is in vain. It's a fun show, good acting, cool characters, decent stuff happening and all the shortcomings really don't even matter at the end. One of those shows that despite everything, just works. Wish there was a season 3 but they boxed themselves in so it had to end.

6\10 i blew out 40 tires hitting all the plot holes watching this.

Hunting Ava Bravo (2022)

This is not horrible

[6/10 · 2 April 2024]

I am not sure why people knock so hard.. it really is not horrible or even bad. Yes the whole relationship if we can call it that between the villain and victim is weird for lack of more appropriate adjectives. I feel that the villain was horribly miscast but at the same time, the ending somewhat explains him. We understand why he is doing it and what he wants which if we go back throughout the movie, does make sense. A lot of the stupid things suddenly make sense.

They do try to explain a lot of the stupid things that both characters do.. its not like they do them just for doing them. The script does try to say yes, this is stupid, it makes no sense, but this is why they are doing it... there is a reason for it. It is a lot of choices that aren't really choices. It is easy to forget, she cannot kill him because she needs him; killing him makes it worse for her no matter what. That's a fact of the situation. He cannot kill her, because well, you will see at the end. Once you connect those things, it becomes much more realistic.

The ending i really felt would go the other way of how it went. Maybe i just have a soft spot for lost puppy souls...

6\10 booby trapped walk in the snow.

Saw X (2023)

after 10 movies...

[4/10 · 29 March 2024]

.... how do you innovate? Well, you do not. Now saw X tried to make the players the villains but it really fell flat. It fell in the trap of making the protagonist, kramer into too much of a CIA operative. Go to a random country, get wronged, escape, then set up of a torture lab every dictator would be proud of overnight and start bringing people in. MAGICALLY! Just like that... so easy, every half dead psychopath can do it...

Everything in this movie is forced. The games are boring, they are rushed, the players are just forced quickly through the ritual eliminating the slow burn choice the saw franchise is known for. You got 1 minute, do this or die cause we have 4 more to go through before dinner... Ok he dead, next person please come on we more to go through in very lame ways.

The ending with the kid for the shock value.. just failed so hard. If you are going to bring kids into this, either go all the way, or keep them off the script. Everything was cheesy, badly done, the whole blood waterboarding was completely out of character. The more i think about it the more stupidity comes through. And the very end, with the supposed double cross pretending that this was all planned.. there are so many holes and variables that kramer would have never done it like that. It is completely out of character and only made so that he doesn't die and for some horrific novice attempt at a gotcha moment (failed).

They could have gone with a banger here.. instead left it open for a yet another cheesy sequel. But stop it, you have nothing. The SAW is done. It was done 5 movies ago and this is just cheap gore that wasn't even done well.

4/10 i want my bone saw back.

Colony (2016–2018)

Highly engaging

[7/10 · 23 February 2024]

The show should be renamed to Alan Snyder Inc because that character steals the show and carries it! Everybody else feels like a stupid background extra on the front of his schemes. He is very reminiscent of tyrian lannister in many ways, but also can be very submissive like varys. Great character all the way around and i love him. I kept watching just to root for him to see if he will make it.

Season 1 i want katie to die. So much.

Season 2 i want bram to die... so much Season 3 i dont care about any of them anymore. It's all about snyder at this point.

As far as the bowman family goes, the only balanced member was charlie, probably because he spent some time away from his literally insane family. And they script killed him in the most stupid way too... Then they realize that and try to pivot his death as some great motivator for Will to go ape.. too little too late guys. Too forced as well. Take the L here. You wasted charlie in a bad way.

Gracie was just a space filler - her arc was eliminated early on and she just became a screen extra for cheap drama shots and lines. They just could not figure how to put her back into anything relevant after the cult went poof.

Bram i truly despised. Stupid, reckless (more so than his mother) somewhat psychopathic and just annoying. Unfortunately he survives. He was all over the place and they tried to show him as that hybrid between will and broussard. Well guess what, it didn't work. The problem is he was too old for us to have sympathy for him and too young for him to be that experienced agent fighter soldier schemer etc they pushed him into. Ultimately the most flawed character in the series. I am still upset he actually survived and is the only one from the family who actually won the game of colony. I think we are being trolled. They elevated and protected the worst family member till the very end. Basically an arya stark all over. Somebody's darling for sure, and not the viewers!

On the subject redeeming deaths, we do get a little retribution at the end by Katie vaporizing (indirectly snyder killed her, good boy snyder) at the end. True to character, she died due to her usual irrational behavior and self absorbency. The scene is not quite clear if she realizes how she basically killed herself or is just processing her final moments in a void of literal emptiness - since she never was able to process actions and consequences.

Our next final scene worthy of mention is Broussard's. His last scene on the show is unclear as to what effect it has on his character. The actor is extremely wooden with 0 emotions. Same tone of voice, same face, same everything throughout the show no matter what happens. At the end, we can't tell if he figures out snyder wasn't lying or if he just doesn't care and just wants to continue killing people.

Here is the funny part about this show. The entire resistance, all its cells and leaders and all that, all they ever do is kill other people. They claim to fight the aliens but they kill other people only. It's quite comical and i think the show did that on purpose.. One of those subtle things that they never let go off till the end. Makes you think... in a world where there is no black and white, being an idealist actually makes you a blind bad guy. That's the theme i get with the resistance and interim government plots.

The acting is good. I have nothing bad to say about anybody. Obviously i took issue with some characters and find them to be illogical and made like that to create plot elements. It gets annoying fast however and they should have switched it up some.

Show continuity and plot holes.. not too many, some but not too many. Usually anything that surrounds Broussard is a plot hole as they try to make him into the terminator way too hard. This means he has too many magic abilities... gets stale fast.

Unfinished plot lines... 3 big ones

• the aliens.. i expected more details on them by the end... but we get nothing. The only convo with an alien we get nets us same info snyder already knew and reveals anyway!

• the other aliens, the organic ones. We see a squished corpse even. Absolutely nothing on them.

• the whole outlier army and the war that they are being sent to.. nothing about this. Nothing. Like black hole. Series ends and we know nothing. Come on.

Worthy mention of another hole. The aliens come to earth and claim to protect it.. which they somewhat do at the end. But then the question becomes, would the other aliens even bother with earth if the first aliens did not come to earth to enslave it for its labor... The show is not explicitly clear if they literally dragged earth into their fight with whoever or if the other aliens wanted to vaporize earth either way. From what we are told about the conflict, it appears that it is indeed a case of alien 2 chasing alien 1 and earth becomes a casualty as alien 1 makes it their base.

This would in turn give credence to the resistance that if the aliens are gone, ie defeated by the resistance, aliens 2 would not have a reason to attack their facilities on earth in the first place. This might tie with broussard's final scene. Something to think about here. Again, the show is not black and white; it is always in that gray zone of logic and morals.

I wanted to give it an 8 but bram lives. So i give it a 4. But then they kill katie, so i give it a 6. But they kill charlie in vain so i give it a 3. But snyder becomes king snyder once more so i give it a 7..

7\10 all hail king snyder or seattle!

Young Ones (2014)

Rather enjoyable

[6/10 · 6 February 2024]

This is a simple movie with no bad or good guys. It is a slow burn drama without much action in the classic sense but there is always something going on and suspense is present to keep you watching.

The acting is good enough and the back story a bit like IDIOCRACY. No rain and lots of farm land has been killed by chemicals. Actual farm land that is fertile, should water be present, is rare.

The movie revolves around two homesteader families that are intertwined for reasons that viewer has to decide for themselves. I mentioned there are not good or bad people here. Just people doing what they need to achieve the goals they feel are just, while not necessarily scheming to be outright evil. A lot of is circumstance that takes over which works well in that dystopian paradox of a world they live in.

There are holes in the scifi sure.. Some things do not make sense.. But we will just ignore them since this is really a drama and as such it does well.

I wanted to give it a 7 but the lack of universe lore than makes sense drags it down.

6\10 you shall deprive a city of water to irrigate your farm, just because.

Beacon 23 (2023– )

Random people in a space lighthouse

[5/10 · 3 February 2024]

Concept of the show is good, everything else is really not. In the series universe space travel is done via beacons (thousands of them). Without them your ship can end anywhere and you die; they are a bit like jump points for space travel. Each beacon has a keeper at all times, just like a lighthouse. Good conceptual story with lots of potential for a lot things.. but they did not pull it off.

The show is extremely disjointed. Characters come and go without reason, their arcs are non existent, the timeline is dubious at best. To further drag things down the backstory is completely messed up and the entire first season they couldn't fix it and just abandoned trying.

The characters are 80% BAD, the actors.... often miscast. Overall acting is B at best.

Subplots are irrational and incomplete and the main plot, well we still don't have such. The show is all over the place with stories and events. Both in real life and retrospect (flashbacks). It is all one big convoluted mess.

And the whole AI angle... yikes. So so so bad. It just becomes annoying. Think of a horrible version of the HAL9000 machine from that 1968 movie.

You should only watch this if you have nothing else to do and just must watch anything scifi.

5\10 im shocked this got a 2nd season already approved and slanted for release.

Kane (2023)

What was this supposed to be

[2/10 · 17 January 2024]

First off clearly this is not good. No way around that. The highlight here is the opening credits. The music totally has you pumped up and then its all nothing from there on out. Literally the high point is the opening credits.

What went wrong here.. well, the cast looked proper. They cast them ok. The tough gangster mobster dudes fit in. They can't act but they should not have to act. See this was supposed to be a mobster action fighting movie... What it turned out to be was stupid dialogue (remember the part about acting) and it buried itself. It tried to be too smart for its own good and collapsed hard.

You have a bunch of muscled up angry looking dudes and what do you do with them.. well, have them play dialogue instead of punching stuff. Total fail and waste of your time.

2\10 because i enjoy horrible dialogue from body builders.

Close (I) (2022)

Coming to terms movie

[7/10 · 17 January 2024]

This is a french movie and they are known to have very liberal views on some subjects. Going over the plot i wasn't sure if i was going to be blindsided by another french movie that shoves certain things in your face. Happy to say, this is perfectly safe for anyone to view.

It is a drama but it is not a coming of age movie. It is a movie about dealing with loss, grief, coming to terms with it. It is a subject that everybody will have to deal with at some point in their lives and in this case it happens to be a 13 year gay boy. So that said, the movie does not focus on this at all. You can literally replace the characters with anybody you see fit and the movie will hold true still. It is a story that is not tied to who the characters are but rather a story of what they go through.

For how that story is told, it does a good job. It not an easy movie to follow along so attention must be paid as it tends to abruptly end scenes more often than not and jump around a bit. It is slow paced which does drag it out a bit longer than needed but it is a very stable pace that lets you absorb the script as it goes along.

This movie will be more impactfull if you can relate to it; these exact events never occurred in my life so i felt watching this as an outsider. I always like to watch movies from that vantage point so I can see them for what they are.

7\10 pretty good french drama.

EO (2022)

Life of a donkey through a donkey

[7/10 · 17 January 2024]

How can you not like a donkey as the main character. It is impossible. You must like donkey. Everybody likes donkey. If the credits are correct, they actually 6 donkeys here to make this, all being cast as the same one tho. As much as i like donkeys I am no donkey expert and cannot vouch if there were in fact 6 actual donkeys swapped in and out throughout.

Right, this is a cheeky movie. It follows donkey as it gets moved around and it shows a lot of human events in the locations around donkey. The movie is a hybrid. We see some about the life of donkey and some about the people donkey meets. And then we see things that are not part of donkey's field of view at all, but are events that tie to said character the donkey has seen. It is not a movie that is limited to literally what the donkey can see. It is broader representation of life than that and there is some artistic license used to create certain situations and expand on them.

The style of the film is light, not dramatic not dark or really funny. It is quirky would be the best way to put it. I am not sure about the ending... not sure if i want to feel good about it or a little bummed out. Very ambiguous emotions they plant into you at the end. Regardless this is a good movie to watch because it is different.

7\10 see donkey like donkey.

Hotel Coolgardie (2016)

Only locals will really get this im told

[3/10 · 17 January 2024]

This is not a movie this is a documentary. Yet it is a documentary shot as a movie. The people are real, the locations are real.. which begs the question.. is this reality tv. Well.. at times it feels like it.

This came out in 2016 but it feels as if it were shot in 1992. Now i don't know if thats how retro it really is there but I cannot get the taste out of my mouth that stuff has been doctored for the sake of filming. Looking at other reviews people are rating out on emotion... Well here is the thing. I am not local. I have not been there. I have no idea what coolgardie is from coppenhagen. Right. I'm a viewer and as a viewer walking into this stone cold i am not impressed.

The movie is literally a collection of conversations between college students on campus without the campus. Except it is supposed to be real people but it feels so fake. So edited out. The movie really has no purpose. It shows nothing. It does not even capture the experience of the 2 girls that go there to work for a few months (was this not the point of this to begin with). To me this makes no sense.. it is on the level of youtube upload shot in VHS. That's literally the quality of the footage itself - VHS. Back to my point about this being a fakementary reality tv but done in a horrible way.

I am sure some will disagree but again, not australian, haven't been to that town, don't know anybody involved. And this is what it feels like to me. Bland, fake, boring and simply amateurish.

3\10 get me outta here mate yea no yea.

RoboCop (2014)

Did we really need a remake

[7/10 · 17 January 2024]

Why did this movie had to be remade.. and it is already 10 years old too. Maybe by the time somebody reads this, another remake will be out. Who knows.

To answer the question... no real reason. The good about this movie is that it is basically a quite faithful remake. A lot of the iconic scenes of the original are there, the characters, the costumes.. it is faithful and that does make it decently good. Honestly.. they kept a lot of the original in this one. I am pleasantly surprised. It feels like the robocop i saw back in the day - they captured the essence and did not wash it out with revisionist scripting. That's good.

What isn't good is that the plot is very singular, meaning it is very limited and short lived. To get around that they padded the absolute boatload of the runtime with training scenes. So many of those... really i mean why. Would have been nicer to cut those out and have robocop do some actual policing. Instead robocop does a single task the whole movie and that's it.

7\10 fairly faithful remake but taze me out of this training room already.

Attraction (2017)

Love story or sci fi war movie what is this

[5/10 · 17 January 2024]

First off this is russian and in russian and my copy did not have subtitles. That said, did understand enough of it to tell you the dialogue is very very non critical here. It's a very visual movie and easy to follow along.

Effects are very good and it feels like a hollywood production; clearly this is a russian movie made in american style. To some degree it does feel like a cheesy teenage love story... there are no teenagers but considering teenagers in movies are now pushing 40 years old actors, i guess we can still call it a teen love story sci fi hybrid.

Overall it's not bad, its not great... it is very middle of everything. To me it's biggest fault is that it could not create an identity for itself. It literally feels too generic, too hollywood copy script.. It has no original ideas or implementations of those. I usually knock russian movies for being too soviet well past the soviet collapse but this one goes all the way on the opposite side of that. Good cgi and thats about it.

5\10 feels like generic hollywood movie dubbed in russian.

The Creator (2023)

A lot going for it and a lot lacking

[6/10 · 17 January 2024]

Visually and cinematographically this is a beautiful production. Acting is good from everybody; character development while not specifically highlighted is sufficiently captured and you get a quick grip on the recurring characters. I find them fitting and well cast. The movie clearly draws some influence from the Rambo franchise which i felt was fine.

It is a very complex movie with so much going on, both from implied and the literal angles. The movie can be seen as a representation of a lot of metaphors... to the point i am not going to get into them because it can be interpreted as very political and im sure they did that on purpose to make you think about certain things.

As well as the movie is made and as entertaining as it is, what drags it down is the lore and science. We are not provided with a lot of background on a lot of things making this feels a little rough and skin deep. There are a couple parts where you will go HOW because it makes no sense. The movie literally says, BECAUSE WE SAID SO and that is all you are given. Now based on what you know, you know it's nonsense but that's all you get. Explanation of scifi in scifi movies is really becoming a lost art and this one doesn't even attempt to tackle it. It is basically a B tier entertainment production rather than a proper scifi movie.. They focused on the now and the visual and it worked on that front, but for a movie that is well over 2 hours long, with so many drawn out scenes that stanley kubrick himself would be impressed, so few details are given. Such shame. We actually got more background in IROBOT... just to put things in perspective.

6\10 watch it, be entertained and forget it.

Nowhere (II) (2023)

Survivalist movie in open sea

[6/10 · 17 January 2024]

First off as much as they tried to hide it using a dystopian setting, this is based on the crossing from africa to europe or france to england, whichever you want to pick. All the elements are there for that. Now, back to the dystopian part... i wish there was more context to that, it feels very rushed, very incomplete and very lacking background. The scenes are there to just make it not too real world related and for some shock value scenes. Moving on..

There are many movies like this one, usually taking place in some singular location. Radio tower, cliff edge, island, mountain top, cave, submarine... on and on we can go on. The same general concept in all of them - adapt and survive. This movie uses a shipping container in the middle of the water. They tried to build the survival aspect of it around that environment, both in and out of the container and let just say, this movie should not be used as a manual on how to handle such a situation. Some things are realistic enough, others are just completely not happening. Therefore points knocked for realism.

I also have to knock points for the movie trying too hard to create tension doom scenes... too forced too predicable. It creates a high and then oh problem solved crisis averted cool down. Imagine the script doing a lot like the sea.. waves of ups and down. How fitting considering the setting.

The cast... ok.. its 99% one woman and she does ok. She is believable enough. The Nico angle i felt was horrible. The movie fails to give us a reason to give any care about him, the few conversations with him are also illogical and all over the place. We have one convo and then another later on where it is almost contradictory to what we were told previously. It is just a bad subplot and he should have just gone away at the opening scenes. Would have made the movie so much cleaner. They probably felt they needed more than 1 person in it but it backfired.

Halfway in the movie you are getting the idea of where they are pointing the story and you really have one question; will it be a happy ending or not. It is a spanish movie meaning it can go either way. Spanish movies are very unpredictable of how they end; they do not have a rule about the note they should end on. And this keeps your curiosity up.

Fast forward to the ending itself - another movie with double ending. We have one ending which i felt was great, very fitting, realistic enough and just fits the tone of everything we have seen so far... But they ruined it. I want to indict whoever thought it was a good idea to shoot that extra 30 second scene after that point.. Perfect example of sabotaging your own production. It gave me a very sour reminder of how INFINITY POOL ended in similar fashion.

6\10 just get me to dry dock already.

Manodrome (2023)

random collection of scenes

[4/10 · 7 January 2024]

I cannot tell what this movie was about. It plays as various scenes that come and go and stand on their own. No real overall plot to be found, or certainly none of any significance or relevance.

It is a bit of a urban gay sex tale but not really, family drama but not really... crime drama... also not really. It is a movie about nothing in particular. Just random scenes out of context from the life the main character.

Acting is very moody, slow paced, dazed like even... Not a fan. Too much of a lost and confused vibe, which might actually be accurate as im sure whoever made this got lost in the script quite a few times.

Really there is no reason to watch this but yet it is not the worst movie ever. Some scenes as i said, on their own, are ok. There is stuff there to watch. Just as a movie doesn't really work.

Cobweb (2023)

It almost tried...

[6/10 · 31 December 2023]

.... to be a less generic horror movie. Of course it was not, but for a moment it tried. I am not sure when horror movies became children with jump scares and inverted walking contouring demons with creepy voice overs. That is literally every horror movie of the past 10 years i can recall.

For a brief moment this one tried to be a little different by using misdirection that would have worked great as the plot itself. Sadly it quickly reverted back to the copy paste script they all use and offered nothing new, nothing interesting and nothing memorable.

There are a lot of illogical things here but the biggest offender is the ending. I have to wonder here if they used the wrong scenes at the end by mistake. It sure feels that way.

6/10 because Peter wasn't annoying.

Finestkind (2023)

Twisted take on NE fishermen

[7/10 · 29 December 2023]

This was enjoyable movie. Yes a lot takes place but it all has its conclusion and closure. The open plots that actually lead somewhere and are closed. For all it does, the movie does not leave loose ends and i applaud it for it.

The cast does good enough and characters are well written. You get a good idea about each pretty fast and they remain consistent throughout.

This is part drama, part adventure, part crime, part love story, part fishing documentary. It has it all and it really works at the end, surprisingly enough. Perhaps one of the big aspects is that it is a feel good movie ultimately and leaves you content at the end.

I understand if you compare it to THE PERFECT STORM expecting hardcore fishing life simulator you will be disappointed. This is not it. This is a movie about a fishing boat crew that get in a spiral of trouble and dig out of it through various ways. The journey to that redemption is the road of self discovery some of the characters take.

7/10 will pose for the canadian coast guard daily.

Last Sentinel (2023)

Tries to hold your attention

[6/10 · 29 December 2023]

I will start with the good. It does engage you because it creates enough events you want to see play out throughout it. It also uses misdirection a few times keeping you confused about the good and bad people, not making it easy to figure out character agendas.

The bad things are it doesn't give enough information to the viewer. A flushed out backstory would have put a lot more context into quite a few things. Subsequently you have gather pieces of evidence as to what is taking place. If you paid close attention you probably figured out the whole idea of the movie and probably felt bad for everyone involved at the end.

Yet my personal pet peeve here would be, how is the oil rig (sentry) no longer leaning? This is the one question that required an answer. There is nothing in the movie that takes place that would kick the platform back straight. I feel i am being trolled here and they put in the whole leaning platform in the script just to pick on those who notice that random subplot that leads to nothing. It is not even a spoiler because it is literally information that is given but not explained and there is nothing that ever takes place to account for the change in angle. You see when a movie is slow paced, you get to spend time thinking about script trolls like that one.

6/10 The leaning oil rig that doesn't lean anymore.

Leave the World Behind (2023)

Drawn out suspense that fizzles out microns deep

[5/10 · 29 December 2023]

First off this movie is very long leading you to believe there is a lot of content in it. That is false, as there is virtually no content. In a sense i enjoyed their focus on detailed scenes and slow pace - makes it very easy to immerse into the lives of the characters and does create tension and anticipation. The acting is decent enough to carry such a slow pace without being boring.

Unfortunately where it collapses is when it tries to reveal what took place and why the characters are where they are. All that is done on an afterthought with horrible lines and absolutely no information or closure provided to the viewer.

This is the type of movie that leaves you with a sour taste asking "ok. And?" but never giving you anything more.

What is the point of watching this then? No real point. That is the problem.